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Knowledge management has emerged as a very successful organization practice and has been
extensively treated in a large body of academic work. Surprisingly, however, organizational
economics (i.e., transaction cost economics, agency theory, team theory and property rights
theory) has played no role in the development of knowledge management. We argue that
organizational economics insights can further the theory and practice of knowledge management
in several ways. Specifically, we apply notions of contracting, team production,
complementaries, hold-up, etc. to knowledge management issues (i.e., creating and integration
knowledge, rewarding knowledge workers, etc.) , and derive refutable implications that are novel
to the knowledge management field from our discussion.

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Knowledge management has emerged as a very successful organization practice and has been
extensively treated in a large body of academic work. Surprisingly, however, organizational
economics (i.e., transaction cost economics, agency theory, team theory and property rights
theory) has played no role in the development of knowledge management. We argue that
organizational economics insights can further the theory and practice of knowledge management
in several ways. Specifically, we apply notions of contracting, team production,
complementaries, hold-up, etc. to knowledge management issues (i.e., creating and integration
knowledge, rewarding knowledge workers, etc.) , and derive refutable implications that are novel
to the knowledge management field from our discussion.

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This article explores the case of product development for insights into the potential role of knowledge management. Current literature on knowledge management entertains the notion that knowledge management is a specific set of practices – separate enough to allow specialization of responsibility. By common standard, the proclaimed responsibility of knowledge management is shared knowledge, saved learning costs and coordinated action in an organization. The significance of the practices of knowledge management is the intention of shared knowledge, saved learning costs and coordinated action.

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This dissertation contributes to the existing body of knowledge on how we design computer
systems, particularly multiuser software for knowledge sharing and creation in globally
diffused companies. This is achieved by conducting a work place study of a global industrial
engineering conglomerate which has the strategy of working with knowledge in the form of
“best practices” meant to boost performance. The thesis explores the situation that workers
are in, since they are meant to share and develop “best practices” knowledge in a portal
based Knowledge Management System (KMS). The study indentifies a set of problems that
prevents knowledge sharing from taking place to the degree to which management was
specifically aiming. It was explored whether these problems could, to some degree, be
mitigated by employing persuasive design, which is a new stance towards design where the
aim is to directly seek to change the user’s behavior, i.e., persuading more knowledge
sharing.
The main contribution is an indication of an anomaly with regards to the strategic
approach towards knowledge management, where knowledge sharing is seen as an effort by
which companies can gain a competitive advantage by working with knowledge in a
structured fashion. The issue is that the descriptions found in literature on strategic
knowledge management do not address the many issues uncovered when conducting
prolonged fieldwork among workers who engage in the activities that the literature
seemingly takes for granted. Thus, many practical problems were uncovered that would
need some level of mitigation before a company could hope to gain a strategic advantage
from working with knowledge. This challenges the “stock" approach towards knowledge
management, which seems to address only the management level of the organization.
A contribution is also made in exploring the state-of-the-art of the emerging field of
persuasive design. Persuasive design aims at enabling designers to create designs that
deliberately change the user’s attitude or behavior. According to this new design tradition,
the designer specifically designs with the aim of behavior transformation. The goal is a
deliberate behavioral change, rather than supporting a set of existing tasks or a set of
existing behaviors. The work presented shows how persuasive design is a very conceptual
area of research, and that it is not a fitting approach for attaining a higher degree of
participation in computer systems for knowledge sharing and creation. Persuasive design is
thus not the remedy for the many problems found that prevent knowledge sharing from
taking place

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Comparative political economy has been dominated since the 1970s by two waves of research. The first one examined how different types of policy-making regimes affect policy making and, in turn, national economic competitiveness (e.g., Katzenstein 1978). The second one studied how different types of production regimes affect national competitiveness (e.g., Hall and Soskice 2001). Absent from all of this is much discussion about knowledge regimes. Knowledge regimes are sets of actors, organizations, and institutions that produce and disseminate policy ideas that affect how policy-making and production regimes are organized and operate in the first place. Knowledge regimes are important because they contribute data, research, theories, policy recommendations, and other ideas that influence public policy and, thus, national economic competitiveness (Baab 2001; Campbell 1998; Pedersen 2006).

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This paper develops the concept of knowledge regime and shows how knowledge regimes
vary across the two most basic varieties of capitalism: liberal and coordinated market economies. The key
questions motivating this paper are whether there are different types of knowledge regimes associated with
different varieties of capitalism during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; how they generate
policy ideas; and how they disseminate these ideas to policy makers. Hence, this paper begins to fill an
important blind spot in the comparative political economy and varieties of capitalism literatures.

Abstract
Previous discussions of knowledge transfer within multinational corporations tended to
focus on the process as an isolated phenomenon and on the factors that impede the process.
Less attention has been given to how the individual knowledge worker retrieves or identifies,
and then decodes knowledge accessed from the corporate memory. We suggest that
multinational companies (MNCs) solve knowledge retrieval problems by implementing
virtual communities of practice - intranet-based collaborative forums. Codification and
personalization strategies have previously been emphasized as an either-or solution. These
virtual communities of practice combine the codification and personalization strategies,
simultaneously utilizing the advantages of two approaches.

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Previous discussions of knowledge transfers within multinational corporations (MNC’s) tended to focus on the process as an isolated phenomenon, and the factors that impede these transfers. Less attention has been given to the identification and personal codification processes of knowledge prior to transfer. A model for understanding how knowledge is retrieved in MNC’s is proposed in this paper, with a specific focus on the retrieval of information located in information technology (IT) systems. The model is derived from (1) a critical examination of knowledge management theory, and (2) the empirical research results gathered from Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). Our survey of CSC reveals that the company is able to overcome the problem of identifying valuable knowledge in a geographical dispersed organization by establishing virtual communities of practice via its portal system. Virtual communities of practice are seen as a combination of the codification and the personalization strategies in this paper.

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time sensitiveness and push-pull strategies in a non-hype organisation

Holdt Christensen, Peter(København, 2003)

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Resume:

The concept of knowledge management has, indeed, become a buzzword that every single organization is expected to practice and live by. Knowledge management is about managing the organization’s knowledge for the common good of the organization – but practicing knowledge management is not as simple as that. This article focuses on knowledge sharing as the process seeking to reduce the resources spent on reinventing the wheel.
The article introduces the concept of time sensitiveness; i.e. that knowledge is either urgently needed, or not that urgently needed. Furthermore, knowledge sharing is considered as either a push or pull system. Four strategies for sharing knowledge – help, post-it, manuals and meeting, and advice are introduced. Each strategy requires different channels for sharing knowledge. An empirical analysis in a production facility highlights how the strategies can be practiced.

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The paper explores how locals span boundaries between corporate and local levels. The aim is to better comprehend potentialities and challenges when MNCs draws on locals’ culture specific knowledge. The study is based on an in-depth, interpretive case study of boundary spanning by local actors in the period of post-acquisition when their organization is being integrated into the acquiring MNC. The paper contributes to the literature on boundary spanning in three ways: First, by illustrating that boundary spanning is performed by numerous organizational actors in a variety of positions in MNCs, inclusively by locals in subsidiaries. Second, by showing that boundary spanning is ‘situated’ in the sense that its result depends on the kind of knowledge to be transmitted and the attitude of the receivers. A third contribution is methodological. The study illustrates that combining bottom-up grounded approach with pattern matching is a way to shed light on the tacit local knowledge that organizational actors cannot articulate and that an exclusively inductive research is not likely to unveil.

Much of the knowledge management literature tends to assume a rather universalist
understanding of knowledge sharing. Yet, attitudes to knowledge sharing as well as actual
knowledge-sharing behaviour depend on conditions that vary across institutional and cultural
environments. This paper contributes to the knowledge-sharing literature by specifically
discussing the interplay between knowledge-sharing and national cultural factors in the context of
transition countries. The paper engages in a comparative examination of two major transition
societies, China and Russia, and contributes to understanding the complexity of differences
between transition economies. The paper is written as a set of theoretical arguments and
propositions that is designed to elucidate more nuanced ways of thinking about knowledge
sharing in China and Russia. We argue that in the case of China and Russia, vertical
individualism and particularist social relations facilitate knowledge sharing. We also maintain
that there are important differences between China and Russia in terms of motivation for
knowledge sharing and propose that the differences between the two countries in terms of origins
of collectivism and degree of collectivism impact on knowledge sharing in organisations in these
two countries. Research and management implications are also outlined.
Keywords: China, knowledge sharing, national culture, Russia

Abstract
Not achieving the anticipated synergy effects in the post-acquisition integration context is a serious cause
for the high acquisition failure rate. While existing studies on failures of acquisitions exist from
economics, finance, strategy, organization theory, and human resources management, this paper applies
insights from the knowledge-sharing literature. The paper establishes a conceptual link between obstacles
in the post-acquisition integration processes and individual knowledge-sharing behavior as related to
knowledge transmitters and knowledge receivers. We argue that such an angle offers important insights to
explaining the high failure rate in acquisitions.
Descriptors: post-acquisition integration, acquisition failure, individual knowledge-sharing behavior

This paper is a study of the knowledge-sharing difficulties experienced by three departments in a knowledge-intensive firm. The case organization is a global consulting firm that has been on the forefront of knowledge management and has won several knowledge management related international acclaims. Our analysis shows that there are strong disincentives in place for departments to share knowledge. We found that the
nature of the businesses of the departments was very different and so were their knowledge requirements and their preferred ways to seek knowledge. Additionally, confidentiality agreements with clients and lack of cross-departmental interaction inhibited knowledge sharing outside departmental boundaries. Contrary to the common belief in the organization, we found that one single IT system could not satisfy the contextspecific knowledge-sharing needs of the different departments. We suggest that some very recent breakthrough technologies could be applied to facilitate cross-departmental knowledge sharing provided they are implemented at the strategic organizational level.

The paper deals with policy issues of knowledge spillovers via foreign direct investment (FDI) to help positioning CEEC economies in global shift in production and innovation. CEEC economies successfully attracted some FDI in R&D. However, considerable misalignment between domestic and foreign technological accumulation exists. This is partly related to the heterogeneity of foreign subsidiaries but even more so to weak performance and governance of national innovation systems as well as poor coordination of FDI and policies in the field of science and technology (S&T). The paper reviews existing relevant policy areas such as linkage promotion, R&D capabilities and technological linkages, horizontal policies, training incentives, as well as industrial, technological and science parks. The paper argues that an increased policy focus on technological aspects would not only improve the potential for technological spillovers from FDI but also the absorption capability of domestic firms. A way forward is to coordinate FDI policy better with R&D, innovation, and regional policy instruments. In this case, CEEC economies can use FDI as means to realign their national innovation systems with global knowledge creation and diffusion.